Early years '' (1646)|alt=painting of dune landscape Ruisdael's work from c. 1646 to the early 1650s, when he was living in Haarlem, is characterised by simple motifs and careful and laborious study of nature: dunes, woods, and atmospheric effects. By applying heavier paint than his predecessors, Ruisdael gave his foliage a rich quality, conveying a sense of sap flowing through branches and leaves. His accurate rendering of trees was unprecedented at the time: the genera of his trees are the first to be unequivocally recognisable by modern-day botanists. His early sketches introduce motifs that would return in all his work: a sense of spaciousness and luminosity, and an airy atmosphere achieved through
pointillist-like touches of chalk. Most of his thirty black chalk sketches that survive date from this period. An exemplar of Ruisdael's early style is
Dune Landscape, one of the earliest works, dated 1646. It breaks with the classic Dutch tradition of depicting broad views of dunes that include houses and trees flanked by distant vistas. Instead, Ruisdael places tree-covered dunes prominently at centre stage, with a cloudscape concentrating strong light on a sandy path. The resulting heroic effect is enhanced by the large size of the canvas, "so unexpected in the work of an inexperienced painter" according to Irina Sokolova, curator at the
Hermitage Museum. The art historian
Hofstede de Groot said of
Dune Landscape: "It is hardly credible that it should be the work of a boy of seventeen". Ruisdael's first panoramic landscape,
View of Naarden with the Church at Muiderberg in the Distance, dates from 1647. The theme of an overwhelming sky and a distant town, in this case the birthplace of his father, is one he returned to in his later years. For unknown reasons, Ruisdael almost entirely stopped dating his work from 1653. Only five works from the 1660s have a, partially obscured, year next to his signature; none from the 1670s and 1680s have a date. Dating subsequent work has therefore been largely based on detective work and speculation. All thirteen known Ruisdael etchings come from his early period, with the first one dated 1646. It is unknown who taught him the art of etching. No etchings exist signed by his father, his uncle, or his fellow Haarlem landscapist Cornelis Vroom, who influenced his other work. His etchings show little influence from Rembrandt, either in style or technique. Few original impressions exist; five etchings survive in only a single impression. The rarity of prints suggests that Ruisdael considered them trial essays, which did not warrant large editions. The etching expert
Georges Duplessis singled out
Grainfield at the Edge of a Wood and
Forest Marsh with Travellers on a Bank as unrivalled illustrations of Ruisdael's genius.
Middle period '' ( 1654–55)|alt=dark painting of ruins and tombs Following Ruisdael's trip to Germany, his landscapes took on a more heroic character, with forms becoming larger and more prominent. A view of
Bentheim Castle, dated 1653, is just one of a dozen of Ruisdael's depictions of a particular castle in Germany, almost all of which pronounce its position on a hilltop. Significantly, Ruisdael made numerous changes to the castle's setting (it is actually on an unimposing low hill) culminating in a 1653 version which shows it on a wooded mountain. These variations are rightly considered by art historians to be evidence of Ruisdael's compositional skills. On his trip to Germany, Ruisdael encountered water mills which he turned into a principal subject for painting, the first artist to ever do so.
Two Water Mills with an Open Sluice, dated 1653, is a prime example. The ruins of
Egmond Castle near Alkmaar were another favourite subject of Ruisdael's and feature in
The Jewish Cemetery, of which he painted two versions. With these, Ruisdael pits the natural world against the built environment, which has been overrun by the trees and shrubs surrounding the cemetery. Ruisdael's first Scandinavian views contain big firs, rugged mountains, large boulders and rushing torrents. Though convincingly realistic, they are based on previous art works, rather than on direct experience. There is no record that Ruisdael made any trip to Scandinavia, although fellow Haarlem painter Allart van Everdingen had travelled there in 1644 and had popularised the subgenre. Ruisdael's work soon outstripped van Everdingen's finest efforts. In total Ruisdael produced more than 150 Scandinavian views featuring waterfalls, of which
Waterfall in a Mountainous Landscape with a Ruined Castle, 1665–1670, is seen as his greatest by Slive. In this period Ruisdael started painting coastal scenes and sea-pieces, influenced by
Simon de Vlieger and
Jan Porcellis. Among the most dramatic is
Rough Sea at a Jetty, with a restricted palette of only black, white, blue and a few brown earth colours. However, forest scenes remain a subject of choice, such as the Hermitage's most famous Ruisdael,
A Wooded Marsh, dated 1665, which depicts a primieval scene with broken birches and oaks, and branches reaching for the sky amidst an overgrown pond.
Later years During Ruisdael's last period he began to depict mountain scenes, such as
Mountainous and Wooded Landscape with a River, dateable to the late 1670s. This portrays a rugged range with the highest peak in the clouds. Ruisdael's subjects became unusually varied. The art historian
Wolfgang Stechow identified thirteen themes within the Dutch Golden Age landscape genre, and Ruisdael's work encompasses all but two of them, excelling at most: forests, rivers, dunes and country roads, panoramas, imaginary landscapes, Scandinavian waterfalls, marines, beachscapes, winter scenes, town views, and nocturnes. Only the
Italianate and foreign landscapes other than Scandinavian are absent from his oeuvre. The imaginary landscapes of gardens that Ruisdael painted in the 1670s actually reflect an ongoing discourse on the
Picturesque in circles of gardening aesthetes like
Constantijn Huygens. '' ( 1665)|alt=painting of a town in the distance and fields under a big sky|left Slive finds it appropriate that a windmill is the subject of one of Ruisdael's most famous works.
Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede, dated 1670, shows
Wijk bij Duurstede, a riverside town about from
Utrecht, with a dominant cylindrical windmill. In this composition, Ruisdael united typical Dutch elements of low-lying land, water and expansive sky, so that they converge on the equally characteristic Dutch windmill. The painting's enduring popularity is evidenced by card sales in the
Rijksmuseum, with the
Windmill ranking third after
Rembrandt's
The Night Watch and
Vermeer's
View of Delft. Windmills featured throughout Ruisdael's entire career. Various panoramic views of the Haarlem skyline and its bleaching grounds appear during this stage, a specific genre called
Haerlempjes, with the clouds creating various gradations of alternating bands of light and shadow towards the horizon. The paintings are often dominated by Saint Bavo's Church, in which Ruisdael would one day be buried. While Amsterdam does feature in his work, it does so relatively rarely given that Ruisdael lived there for over 25 years. It does feature in his only known architectural subject, a drawing of the interior of the
Old Church, as well as in views of the Dam, and the
Panoramic view of the Amstel looking toward Amsterdam, one of Ruisdael's last paintings. Figures are introduced sparingly into Ruisdael's compositions, and are by this period rarely from his own hand but executed by various artists, including his pupil Meindert Hobbema, Nicolaes Berchem,
Adriaen van de Velde,
Philips Wouwerman,
Jan Vonck,
Thomas de Keyser,
Gerrit Battem and
Johannes Lingelbach. Van Gogh's contemporary
Claude Monet is also said to be indebted to Ruisdael. Similarly,
Piet Mondrian's early abstract compositions the eventually led to the founding of
De Stijl have been traced back to Ruisdael's panoramas. the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which holds sixteen paintings; the
Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, which holds nine, and the
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain has four (and two additional paintings attributed to Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael). In the US, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has five Ruisdaels in its collection, and the
J. Paul Getty Museum in California has three. On occasion a Ruisdael changes hands. In 2014,
Dunes by the Sea was auctioned at
Christie's in New York, and realised a price of $1,805,000. Of his surviving drawings, 140 in total, the Rijksmuseum, the
Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the
Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, and the Hermitage each hold significant collections. Ruisdael's rare etchings are spread across institutions. No collection holds a print of each of the thirteen etchings. Of the five unique prints, the
British Museum holds two, two are in the
Albertina in Vienna, and one is in Amsterdam. ==Context==